Did YouTube Help Nab the Times Square Bomber?

Federal agents have made an arrest in the Times Square bombing attempt. And YouTube may have provided some clues to the investigators.

Faisal Shahzad was attempting to board a plane for Dubai when he was apprehended at New York’s JFK airport. Law enforcement officials believe the Connecticut resident recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was rigged with explosives and fertilizer and left smoldering in Times Square.

One “clue in the investigation is a video posted online early Sunday morning by persons in Connecticut, who may have been involved in the bomb attempt and are being sought by law enforcement,” ABC News reports.

The video (above), features the voice of Qari Hussain Mehsud, the “Pakistani Taliban master trainer of suicide bombers,” according to The Long War Journal. The clip congratulates fellow Muslims for the “jaw-breaking blow to Satan’s USA.” The video continues, “the attack is a revenge” for the slaying of extremist leaders in Iraq and Pakistan, and is a response to “the recent rain of drone attacks.”

The YouTube website that hosted the video was created by a group calling itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel. The website was created one day before the failed attack, and the video was also uploaded one day before the attack, The Long War Journal reports.

US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal on May 2 believed the YouTube site was created specifically to announce the Times Square attack.

(The video and the channel have since been pulled from YouTube. But a copy remains on DailyMotion.com.)

The Taliban clip wasn’t the only digital video evidence being examined. On Monday, before the arrest, New York police “sifted through footage from 82 city cameras mounted from 34th Street to 51st Street between Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue, and from untold number of business and tourist cameras,” according to The New York Times.

Agents and officers have been following other data trails. The Pathfinder was offered up on Craiglist and NothingButCars.net by Peggy Colas of Bridgeport, Connecticut. She sold the car for $1,300 in cash — all $100 bills — and turned the keys over at a local mall.